LDWA 100 – Training Walk 5 (Reedham Ferry to Chedgrave/Loddon)

The main page for this walk is here, this blog post is just the section from Reedham Ferry to Chedgrave/Loddon.

In my last blog post, I mentioned that it was just a short walk along the river towards Reedham Ferry. This transpired to be untrue, as the river section is closed and it required a diversion up via the village’s railway station. We tutted silently at this additional length (although to be fair, it wasn’t much), but it was a handy opportunity to take a quick look at the railway station.

Reedham railway station was built in 1844 on what was the county’s first railway line, the Yarmouth and Norwich Railway. Today, the line serves both the Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth branches.

More on this railway station in another post, but we meandered off the path to have a quick look at it.

Looking back to Reedham on the road which leads to the ferry.

In the background of this photo is Cantley sugar factory, more on which later.

This looks an old sign….

And we waited at the appropriate spot for our ferry journey across the river, this is the only river crossing for cars and pedestrians anywhere between Norwich and Great Yarmouth. I’ve never made this crossing before and I think it was a little bit of a highlight for us, although perhaps that just means we need to get out more….

There wasn’t a long wait for the chain ferry to return from the other side to pick us up.

The fare is 50p per pedestrian to cross the river and it can also carry up to three cars.

Nathan looking excited on the ferry.

The view from the ferry, with the current chain ferry dating to 1984, but there’s been a ferry crossing here since the seventeenth century.

Departing the ferry journey and we very much enjoyed our 60-second cruise. We chose not to upgrade to first class.

The spot by Reedham ferry is a nuisance in many ways, as there’s no way of crossing the next section of river to the next stretch of path, which means a long diversion round to Loddon and Chedgrave. So, contemplating this state of affairs, we had a rest and I had the remainder of my meal deal.

This is St. Gregory’s Church in Heckingham, more on which in another post, but it’s a twelfth-century redundant church (I mean it’s redundant now, it wasn’t redundant when they built it) which is now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.

Although we didn’t much mind that a couple of dogs came over to play, I do wonder whether perhaps owners should be more careful as for all they knew Nathan might have dognapped their pet. I hear this is a big thing in Suffolk…..

Holy Trinity Church in Loddon, which again I’ll come back to in a future post.

We had always intended for Loddon to be where we restocked, but since our water levels were high not much more was needed. As it was now quite warm, I decided that an ice cream would be my decadent treat (I say decadent, it was £1). We looked at the Magnums but thought they were too decadent at nearly £2 each, Nathan went with a Feast for £1. No expense spared….

One issue was that the shop took longer than we had anticipated as two elderly ladies were ahead of us in the aisle and were looking at nearly every item in great detail. A queue was forming behind and I really wanted Nathan to go and say something, but he was too polite. So we did the very British thing of staring at the back of their heads with a grumpy look, as this made us feel better.

A few weeks ago, I popped into the Premier store and obtained some banana bread beer from Eagle, which I rather liked. Unfortunately, they’d run out today, so Nathan opted for a Newcastle Brown Ale and I went for an Adnams Broadside (I say I went for, Nathan chose for me as I was outside finishing my ice cream and getting the best value from my £1 possible). That was the best choice of a bad lot, but they went down surprisingly well. It was just a little hard to entirely enjoy them to their fullest extent though as something akin to a tornado and Biblical flood hit the village during this moment.

On that note, we then left the metropolis of Loddon and Chedgrave, often referred to as the Las Vegas of Broadland, moving on to the next part of the walk.